


Sun-Bleached

by Vulpesmellifera



Series: The Songs of Solomon [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depeche Mode - Freeform, Don't copy to another site, Halcyon Myth, Light BDSM, M/M, Possessive Mycroft, song prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-10 12:01:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19905373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulpesmellifera/pseuds/Vulpesmellifera
Summary: Sherlock would find curious things: the dried exoskeletons of crustaceans, hollowed out shells of mollusks, and one time, the sun-bleached bones of a little bird that usually nested along rivers. Alcedo atthis, the common kingfisher.That image never quite left my mind. Sherlock’s face like a bright beacon on an overcast day,  the skeletonized remains of a bird that waved with his movements, held between two fingers.This is how I want Greg Lestrade: pinched between two fingers, a flag in the breeze, unshielded from the elements of me.





	Sun-Bleached

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phoenixrising2014](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixrising2014/gifts).



> Phoenixrising2014 won me in the 2019 Rupert Graves Birthday Project, a charity auction to benefit the Trussell Trust. I'm so honored that she picked my offer in a charity auction to benefit a great cause! Thank you, Phoenix! And a big thank you to Graves-Diggers for all their hard work in putting together this auction. 
> 
> I'd often considered starting a series of song-inspired fics, and she got me started with her prompt: "Stripped" by Depeche Mode. It helps that it's one of my favorite songs by them! Not familiar? Follow [this link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU8UfYdKHvs) to the video, or [this one](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5GTkGk90G30vVxVp91fzCm) to listen on Spotify.
> 
> Please enjoy.

> Let me see you  
>  Stripped down to the bone  
>  Let me see you  
>  Stripped down to the bone 

> Metropolis  
>  Has nothing on this  
>  You're breathing in fumes  
>  I taste when we kiss
> 
> Take my hand  
>  Come back to the land   
>  Where everything's ours  
>  For a few hours
> 
> Let me see you  
>  Stripped down to the bone  
>  Let me see you  
>  Stripped down to the bone

> -Depeche Mode, _Stripped_

He has cigarette stained fingers and teeth that have been whitened by a dentist. A soft middle from too many doughnuts. A laugh that makes my stomach quake. Eyes like two dark, fathomless wells. 

No wedding ring.

To have that attention turned on me. To have that gaze belong to me, and only me. The desire winds about my throat and squeezes.

“Detective Inspector,” I say with a curt snap of my jaw. “Report.”

His eyes shine, his lips part, and he shifts his weight from the left foot to the right. There’s a sheen of perspiration above his brow.

_I did that._

“Nothing more than his usual antics,” he says in a voice made for fucking. _How many years have we been doing this?_ Adonis, loved by Aphrodite, gored by the boar who is Ares in disguise. _Who am I in this metaphor? A Goddess of Love?_

_More like the boar who shoves a sharp tusk into the flesh of an innocent man._

_The better to see what lies beneath._ I smile, show him my canines. _A God of War._ “A riveting report, Inspector.”

His eyes darken. “What d’you want me to say?” He crosses his arms and I can see his anxiety slip into annoyance. 

“Have you concrete examples of these so-called antics?” I enunciate with sharpness on the consonants.

He shakes his head. “We do this every time. Every. Single. Time.”

“Please elucidate as to what you mean.” I offer him a benign smile. I enjoy these moments. This foreplay of a superior creature and his goldfish. _But that’s not all he is to you._ It infuriates me to know I am entranced by the circles this goldfish swims in shallow waters. 

“You with your stupid smile and your ‘I don’t care’ attitude, treating me like I’m some lapdog that’s only good for babysitting your brother.” To see Greg Lestrade angry is truly captivating, and I don’t move.

“What do you wish to do about it?” I say. 

“I want to know what you really want from me,” he challenges.

A ripple of lust skids through me. I clench one fist behind my back. “I don’t know what you mean.”

His eyes aren’t fathomless wells, but two smouldering coals among the ash. 

* * *

I can remember a time when I enjoyed walking along the beach. Eyeing microcrystalline grains of quartz, feldspar, muscovite and biotite, garnet, sillimanite and kyanite, and quite possibly a hundred more sand-forming minerals. Pebbles of granite, schist, jasper, quartz, and pink feldspar. Piles of tangled seaweeds: _Corallina officinalis, Chondrus crispus, Ulva intestinalis, Padina pavonica,_ and more. 

Sherlock would find curious things: the dried exoskeletons of crustaceans, hollowed out shells of mollusks, and one time, the sun-bleached bones of a little bird that usually nested along rivers. _Alcedo atthis_ , the common kingfisher. 

That image never quite left my mind. Sherlock’s face like a bright beacon on an overcast day, the skeletonized remains of a bird that waved with his movements, held between two fingers.

This is how I want Greg Lestrade: pinched between two fingers, a flag in the breeze, unshielded from the elements of me.

* * *

He stalks toward me, his fists clenched and his mouth pulled down at the corners. His eyes smoulder and I’m aflame with the white-hot heat of excitement. To actually feel something other than the day in and day out mind-numbing and frigid existence of everyday life. 

His hands upon me, he grabs me by the collar. I can’t help the laughter that erupts. He pauses, surprised. “Please, Detective Inspector, keep going,” I say in a slithering whisper. His pupils widen but he relaxes his grip. I catch his wrist in my hand. “Keep going,” I order. _Please._

His jaw goes slack but his eyes are on mine, his nose inches from mine. I can feel his breath on my mouth. I’m abuzz with a mania I have never felt in my life as my blood thrums with the quickened beating of my heart, the rush of endorphins: dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, - an effusive cocktail of drugs that flushes my neurons, synapses firing at all angles, my skin bubbling with a strange sort of giddiness and my cock tumescent with the thrill of this man’s hands upon me. I want to divest him of his skin and his muscles and organs and know that I make him tick. He is my swordbearer and I am his general. _There will be no armor between us._

Our mouths clash and I lick his tongue and palate and teeth in an attempt to record the taste of everything. I think I would wear his skin if possible. I could gnaw on his bones like a siren, desperate and starving. The heat comes off of me in waves like asphalt on a summer day and I hope he’ll never let me go. 

But our eyes are closed, and I am never satisfied.

* * *

The restaurant is stone tiled floors and murals of quaint seaside villages. Heavy drapery tied with gold cords and ostentatious tassels. I’m dressed in my usual three-piece suit and my hair is gelled in place. I project an image of wealth and authority, confidence and aristocratic snobbery. 

I watch him slice into steak and I think of his flesh. He doesn’t know it, but I’m a bird sitting in a field with wings and vocal cords clipped. My plumage fascinates and distracts. No one asks me to sing.

“So, what do you really do for your job?” He asks.

“I...am a minor civil servant. An accountant, of sorts.” I smile. _No one really wants to know._

“Uh-huh. And, where did you and Sherlock grow up?” 

Ashes and flame. “There’s nothing there, now. It’s charred wood and weathered stone. Unhappy memories.”

His eyes grow sad and I feel my usual smugness eclipsed by unexpected mortification. 

“You wouldn’t be interested in hearing these things,” I wave my hand at him, and turn my attention to the window which shows a starless night. Light pollution. Another obfuscation of the facts.

* * *

Fucking in his bed is another way to peel back his layers. My eyes catalog everything in the room. There’s a walnut dresser with a plain wood-framed mirror that hangs over it. On top, a mirrored tray with watch, cufflinks in a box, a silver earring ( _the hole is still there in the left ear_ ), a silver chain with a cross ( _he isn’t religious, it’s a hand-me-down_ ), a quanco ( _he'd laugh if he heard you call the rugby ball such an archaic term_ ), and a layer of dust all around the items he rarely touches - the earring and the cufflinks. His windows are shaded by green curtains, Queen CDs lay atop an old stereo, a book on the bedside table ( _Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson), a garage sale lamp with a yellowed shade, and laundry piled on a brown suede armchair in the corner. 

“You’re quiet,” he says. The sheen of sweat from our coupling limns the curves and dips of his body. I lean over and taste it with my tongue. 

“You taste like saltwater,” I say.

“You enjoy the ocean, don’t you?” He says. I could combust with delight, but like a fickle breeze I turn from him. 

“Me too,” he says as he presses closer to me. I file that nugget of information away, in my catalog of Greg.

* * *

It isn’t enough to sit with this man and talk to him. It isn’t enough to taste his skin and count individual breaths as he sleeps. I’ve read his books and smelled his clothes and investigated the neighborhood where he grew up. I’ve watched him on CCTV. I’ve memorized his cheeky grin - the lift of zygomaticus major and minor accompanied by the pull of the risorius, the twitch of levator labii superioris with support from the levator anguli oris, and the answering orbicularis oculi - but I can’t explain why the collaborative effort of these muscles make my chest ache with a quiet devastation. 

I want him to be mine. I want him to want me. I want something more that I can’t define, so we continue with our dinners and our sleepovers and I try to elevate the sensation of belonging between us.

 _Be mine. Be mine. Be mine._ My heart blooms with his excitement, and pinches with his dismay. He could play me like an instrument, and so I hope, and hope, and hope.

* * *

The driving of hard, rigid flesh into his body, claiming him again and again, my hands gripping the nape of his neck and in his hair, my teeth to his shoulder. His throaty whimpers and soft, broken cries beg me for more. His body shakes with each of my thrusts.  
  
Afterward, I wipe away fluids, and I realize that there’s something missing. Something is off. I feel the urge to kiss him like we’re lovers, so I press my lips to him again and again.

* * *

“This is what you want, really?” His gaze on mine. The website caters to those with wealth and special interests. He looks again, clicking through pages of products and apparel. 

“Yes,” I say.

“Well, I’ve done a bit like it.” He winks at me. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued.” He smiles as he adds something to the shopping cart. 

I feel the bird in my chest spread it wings, stopped only by my ribs, bone unyielding to matters of the heart. 

He kisses my forehead. It’s a gesture of affection that surprises me. I am not a lovable man.

“Go ahead and pick something out. I picked mine. I’ll be happy to play with you.” He flashes me his teeth, and goes back to preparing dinner. 

* * *

When the package arrives, I am careful to open it - cardboard and expanded polystyrene plastic to protect the contents - and lift out the large, wooden box inside. The interior is black velvet. Nestled among blood red silk is a set of studded leather cuffs handmade in London. The metal snaps and links are detailed with 24 karat gold plating. Beside it lays the spreader bar with matching leather restraints. The crowning jewel is a simple black crop made with braided leather. My insides quiver and my cock thickens as I stroke it with my fingers and brush the end against my cheek. I can smell it - sweat and sex and leather. 

* * *

I hold the crop, grip it so hard my knuckles burn with the ache. Ligaments, tendons, carpals and metacarpals. Greg stands there, nude, bare, stripped. I stare at his skin, the largest organ of the body.

  
He’s perfect.  
  
Except his back is to me.  
  
I stand there, crop in my grasp. I want him to look at me. Before I can stop it, a noise like a choked sob escapes me.  
  
Greg turns his head to see me. Eyes - iris, aperture, optic nerve, brain - the color of decaying leaves. Except for that shine, that glint that speaks of life, of longed for halcyon days.  
  
“This isn’t about me, is it?” Greg asks. “This is about you.”  
  
I shutter my eyes against his words.  
  
“You want to be exposed. You want to be vulnerable.” I feel the weight of his fingers on my arm. I hadn’t heard his tread on unsocked feet. “You want someone to see you.”  
  
I groan and shake my head. My pulse pounds in my ears.  
  
“But it scares you, yeah? It scares you.” His thick fingers caress my chin. “It’s okay. I see you.” He leans in, kisses me.  
  
The kisses are tender. It’s what I’ve been missing all along. My heart blooms and bursts as the blood rushes in my ears and my body collapses into his. He is the salt of the earth, and I am the sea rushing in to meet him.  
  
“I love you,” he whispers. “I’ll give you what you need.”

I feel the cage doors of my ribs open. This, this is what I could not deduce. This was the key. Saltwater in my eyes, I think again that I am the sea beaten by a tempest, wind-whipped and weary, calm in the aftermath of him.

  
I watch him as he picks up the crop. He turns those eyes on me, eyes that speak of absolution, redemption. Eros. Even though he is the one standing in the nude, I am the one who is stripped. 

“Now,” he says in a gentle tone. “Pick a safe word.”  
  
My heart soars like a bird, a common kingfisher, made flesh and seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> If you love mythology, you may enjoy [The Tenth Muse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17593490/chapters/41470481).
> 
> If you need a little fluff and humor after that, try [Woes of the Pharnyx.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18056738)


End file.
